Is now the time to do some serious spread betting?

There’s a sub-set of data in the PB/Angus Reid general election polling series that looks at what is happening in the 62 seats which the Lib Dems won at the 2005 general election. Inevitably given that this represents only about one in ten of all GB seats the sub-sample is small.

But the numbers coming from surveys since the debate show that Clegg’s party is doing enormously well in the seats that it holds. Last night’s poll had the split LD 44%: CON 23%: LAB 19%.

This supports what was being shown in pre-debate polling that the Lib Dems are doing well in the seats that they are defending. The chances are, surely, that it will keep almost all of them.

So if you are entering into the high-risk arena of spread-betting on commons seats then you can be relatively confident that Clegg’s party is not going to drop below about 60. If you bought at the current Sporting Index level of 86 seats then, arguably, your maximum losses would be about 26 seats.

Thus a bet of Â£10 a seat would expose you to a down-side risk of Â£260. Set that against the potential upside. Thus taking last night’s YouGov poll fed into the Well UKPR seat calculator and you get a 143 seat projection – or a potential gain of 67 or Â£670 for a Â£10 a seat bet.

The question is whether the Lib Dems are going to stay up at these dizzy heights or will the bubble burst? Well it hasn’t so far and the surge continues.

All the polls where the fieldwork was completed yesterday had very good numbers for Clegg’s team. The ComRes roly poly poll was slightly earlier and based on the aggregation of samples of 500 from each of Sunday and Monday.

One of the great things about spread betting on commons seats is that if you see your choice fading then you close the bet down at whatever the current sell price is.